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Charles Townes

One of the American scientists who invented the laser but did not at first realise its huge possibilities

January 29 2015, 12:01am, The Times

Townes held posts at many of the leading institutions and advised Nasa on space exploration during the Apollo missionsThe LIFE Picture Collection

Charles Townes was one of two American scientists who invented the laser, a beam of light which has spawned a multi-billion pound industry. A concept that most people never thought possible, the laser is now almost commonplace, used in everything from CD players, supermarket checkouts, and pop-concert holograms to hospital operating rooms and outer space.

Townes, a winner of the Nobel prize for physics for his work in the late 1950s, said in his memoirs, How the Laser Happened: “The truth is, none of us who worked on the first lasers imagined how many uses there might eventually be.”

Within a decade, laser beams reflected between Earth and the moon had allowed measurement of the distance to an accuracy of an inch. Now the smallest…

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